Malicious Versions of Best-Selling Android Games Spreading In Russia

Despite the presence of the legitimate Google Play app store, cybercriminals are still hooking users by distributing malicious Android games themselves. Now, they’re taking advantage of a list of best-selling Android games.

As before, the criminals have created .RU domains for each Android game they’re (supposedly) distributing. Links to these domains will spread via forum or blog posts, as well as email. Here’s a full list of the games that are being used by this new wave of mobile malware:

If you look closely at the above list, you can see the wide selection of targeted apps. These include newly developed games like Cut the Rope: Experiments and Amazing Alex; Editor’s Choice apps like World of Goo, Shadowgun, Sprinkle, Where’s My Water, Osmos HD, Riptide GP and Angry Birds Space Premium. Many of these are top sellers as well.

Aside from best-selling games, some popular movie franchises like The Amazing Spiderman and The Dark Knight Rises are also being exploited, even if the actual games themselves don’t exist. Here’s the page for the supposed Spiderman game:

All of the download links in these pages actually redirect users to a separate site, where the malicious APK files are actually hosted. Some of the sites in question also include QR codes, although these lead to the same files. (We detect these files as ANDROIDOS_SMSBOXER.B.) This particular malware family is notorious for abusing premium services numbers, which may result in high phone charges for the user.

Trend Micro customers are now protected by blocking the malicious URLs and detecting the files via the Smart Protection Network. In particular, Trend Micro Mobile Security for Android also detects these malicious apps, preventing their installation on mobile devices.

As we mentioned earlier, these particular attacks against Russian Android users are not new. Previous attacks have claimed they were websites for Angry Birds Space, Farm Frenzy 3 and Temple Run. (We have compiled a Web Attack entry discussing these threats as well.)

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